“It does, indeed, Charlie.  They will be delighted across the water.  I don’t think my father counted, at all, upon our finding Nicholson, or of our getting him to confess; but I think he had hoped that the duke would interest himself to get an order, that no further proceedings should be taken in the matter of the alleged plot.  That would have permitted them to return to England.  He spoke to me, several times, of his knowledge of the duke when he was a young man; but Churchill, he said, was a time server, and has certainly changed his politics several times; and, if a man is fickle in politics, he may be so in his friendships.  It was a great many years since they had met, and Marlborough might not have been inclined to acknowledge one charged with so serious a crime.

“But, as he said to me before I started, matters have changed since the death of William.  Marlborough stands far higher, with Anne, than he did with William.  His leanings have certainly been, all along, Jacobite, and, now that he and the Tories are in power, and the Whigs are out of favour, Marlborough could, if he chose, do very much for us.  It is no longer a crime to be a Jacobite, and indeed, they say that the Tories are intending to upset the act of succession, and bring in a fresh one, making James Stuart the successor to Anne.

“Still, even if we had succeeded so far, by Marlborough’s influence, that our fathers could have returned to England without fear of being tried for their lives, I do not think that either of them would have come, so long as the charge of having been concerned in an assassination plot was hanging over them.

“Now that they are cleared, and can come back with honour, it will be different, altogether.  It will be glorious news for them.  Of course, we shall start as soon as we get the official communication that the estates are restored.  We shall only have to go back to them, for, as you know, yours is the only estate that has been granted to anyone else.  The others were put up for sale, but no one would bid for them, as the title deeds would have been worth nothing if King James came over.  So they have only been let to farmers, and we can walk straight in again, without dispossessing anyone.”

“I don’t know what to do about John Dormay,” Charlie said.  “There is no doubt that, from what the judge said, they will prosecute him.”

“So they ought to,” Harry broke in.  “He has striven, by false swearing, to bring innocent men to the scaffold.  Why, it is worse than murder.”

“I quite agree with you, Harry, and, if I were in your place, I would say just as strongly as you do that he ought to be hung.  But you see, I am differently situated.  The man is a kinsman of ours by marriage.  My cousin Celia has been always most kind to me, and is my nearest relative after my father.  She has been like an aunt, and, indeed, did all she could to supply the place of a mother to me; and I am sure my little sweetheart Ciceley has been like a sister.  This must have been a most terrible trial to them.  It was a bad day for cousin Celia when she married that scoundrel, and I am sure that he has made her life a most unhappy one.  Still, for their sake, I would not see his villainy punished as it deserves, nor indeed for our own, since the man is, to a certain extent, our kinsman.